GAO: Length of DoD withdrawal from Afghanistan to surpass Iraq

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GAO: Length of DoD withdrawal from Afghanistan to surpass Iraq

The Department of Defense expects a longer and possibly a more costly withdrawal of Army and Marine Corps equipment from Afghanistan than in Iraq, according to a...

Federal News Network Staff

October 2, 2014 12:05 pm

2 min read

By Jory Heckman
Federal News Radio

The Department of Defense expects a longer and possibly a more costly withdrawal of Army and Marine Corps equipment from Afghanistan than in Iraq, according to a Government Accountability Office report released on Tuesday.

To prepare for a drawdown of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan in December, the report warns DoD that pulling non-essential Army and Marine vehicles and equipment from the land-locked country poses more logistical problems than moving the same materiel from Iraq. DoD officials who spoke with GAO said moving these military vehicles “represent the most challenging equipment to move out of Afghanistan.” The report follows up on an earlier GAO study published in December 2012.

According to DoD officials interviewed by GAO, the drawdown from Afghanistan will be more complex than the Iraq effort, which a senior official described as “one of the most complex logistical operations in U.S. military history.”

“The Department of Defense (DoD) has made some progress in its drawdown of equipment from Afghanistan, but ongoing uncertainties about the future force in Afghanistan could affect progress of the drawdown,” the report says.

According to a senior DoD official, some units have held onto equipment scheduled to be turned in due to uncertainty about the U.S. military’s post-2014 presence in Afghanistan. Knowing that, GAO said, is necessary to determine how much equipment can be turned over to Afghan forces or destroyed.

Citing “ineffectual internal controls,” the report concludes that the Army and Marine Corps “may be incurring unnecessary costs by returning equipment that potentially exceeds service needs or that is not economical to return and repair.”

GAO reports that in a 12-month period, the Army and Marines returned more than 1,000 potentially unnecessary vehicles from Afghanistan at a cost of about $107,400 per vehicle.

The report concludes that neither military branch documented or reviewed justifications for returning equipment as per DoD guidelines, which indicate that equipment exceeding certain service-approved quantities should not be retained unless there are economic or contingency reasons that justify the retention.

From October 2012 to October 2014, DoD returned or destroyed 14,664 military vehicles, about 55 percent of what the agency had forecasted, GAO reported.

GAO found that the Army and the Marine Corps’ decision to return and repair the vehicles may have been made because they did not consider transportation costs in making equipment-disposition decisions. DOD guidance indicates that equipment exceeding certain service-approved quantities should not be retained unless economic or contingency reasons support its retention.

DoD agreed with GAO’s findings in the report, which recommends that Army and Marine Corps document and review justifications for the return of potentially unneeded items, and to include transportation costs into those justifications.

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